From Liberator to Educator
Towards the end of WWII, an exhausted, war weary young infantryman of the 409th Infantry Regiment in the 103rd Infantry Division was anxiously awaiting and looking forward to the day the most destructive war in human history would end. Little did he know that before this conflict would finally grind to a halt, that he would catch a horrific glimpse of some of the worst atrocities imaginable. A thoughtful and literate young man - he would later turn this experience into an opportunity to educate others about what he saw, both to keep alive the memory of what happened, and to ensure that something like this never happened again.
Dr. Roy Arthur Swanson was born and educated in Minnesota on April 17, 1925. An accomplished academic, he earned B.A., B.S., and M.A. degrees from the University of Minnesota,and later became a tenured professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. It was while he was at the UW-M that he founded the Holocaust Research and Information Project.
Dr. Swanson passed away on December 15, 2020. The Minnesota Military and Veterans Museum was the recipient of a major collection of his materials compiled on the Holocaust-including his original wartime diary and other notes on his experiences during the war.